Jay Z’s Tidal Inflating Subscribers in Bid To Appear Bigger than it is

According to an exposé published in the Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv, Tidal has been falsely boosting its user numbers to the public. The report states that the Jay Z owned music streaming service is further behind Spotify and Apple Music subscribers than it is admitting. The newspaper was able to obtain and review internal documents that paint a different story than what the company has been preaching over the years.

When Jay Z tweeted that Tidal had "1,000,000 people and counting," in September 2015, the actual number was around 350,000. In March 2016, the company stated that it hit the 3 million mark, but the report states the number to be around 850,000 while internally Tidal reported the total to be 1.2 million subscribers.

Why the lie? Jay Z spent $56 million on Tidal. It's important to make sure the service emits success in order to get a bigger player to buy them out for a windfall profit, keep signing big artist exclusives, and to make sure the public keeps signing up with a winner.